Managing references and citing sources

Any scientific research, whether conducted by Bachelor-students or professors, builds on the work of others. To acknowledge this, we add references to our own work.

Collecting the information you need to create the right references manually can be a lot of work. Tools, called reference managers, are available to make this easier. Examples of reference managers are RefWorks, EndNote, Zotero and Mendeley. These tools store bibliographic data such as title, name of author(s), year of publication, etc.

These programs are useful for:

• Getting credentials automatically
  You can manually add references to a reference manager, but also retrieve them directly (often in bulk) from many academic databases with a few simple mouse clicks.
• Reference management
  With a reference manager you keep an overview of found literature. You can organize the titles in folders, add keywords and other information, and sometimes also add (PDF) files.
• Adding references and create a bibliography
  Reference managers help you create literature lists in reference styles (such as APA or Chicago) and often help you add citations in a text. The reference manager automatically applies the rules of the different styles.

RefWorks